


Blood on the Tiles

by madlyimpossible



Category: The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Fire, Needles, Other, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 19:57:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4113036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madlyimpossible/pseuds/madlyimpossible
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is meant as a little birthday present for a friend who is very near and dear to my heart. She asked me a question once that I felt she deserved an answer to, and may quite possibly have gotten carried away in the process. </p>
<p>The question itself is simple in nature, but heavy in implication: </p>
<p>"Where is Peeta during the Air Raid Drill?" </p>
<p>This one is for you, Grace. I love you, happy birthday. xo</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood on the Tiles

It's mere seconds after the warning has left his lips when something blunt connects with the side of his face. He thinks it was the but of a gun, but it could easily have been a fist. It'd all happened so fast it was hard to process beyond blurred flashes of color and the lights that dance behind his eyes from the impact. Peeta raises his head just in time to see his own blood, splattered across the white tiled floor, on the television broadcast live before the Capitol cuts the feed and the screens go black.

Everything happens so quickly after that. He's pulled to his feet and escorted roughly out of the room. Peeta is rendered dizzy and disoriented from the blow to his head, and his body is exhibiting all the tell tale signs of starvation. His feet move, but really only due to the help of the Peacekeepers. Without their rough hold on his arms, propping him up, the exhaustion would pull him down like gravity. _He's so tired._

The memories are muddled in his head, as if he's gazing at them through a muddle puddle rather than his eyes, but he's saved her. Katniss. He can still see the curve of her braid as it falls over her shoulder when he closes his eyes. That's a memory easier to focus on. When he thinks too much about her eyes, things get fuzzy ; shiny. Sometimes they are too grey, too deep, and he gets lost in them. Other times they are so cold he feels as if he'll never be warm again. Love, hate. Hot, cold. _No, no._ Her eyes are too confusing. It's easier to focus on her braid.

But he'd saved her -- warned them. All of them. Maybe now it can finally end.

They bring him into a room that's too bright, but it's familiar. It's sickening how relief courses through him at the thought. Familiar is a feeling so easily taken for granted. This room is too bright, too white, and filled with tools better suited for a room the color of charcoal, but he's been in here so many times over the days -- weeks? months? -- that he's spent in the Capitol that the antiseptic tinged air feels clean in corrupted lungs. _No, no. That's wrong._ It's a cloying smell. It sticks to the back of his throat and makes it hard to swallow. The room is well air conditioned but suddenly Peeta is sweating.

He knows what happens next.

They're strapping him to the chair now and even after all this time, he begs them not to. Pleads through lips caked with his own blood. Every time he swallows, it's metallic and sharp. The words do nothing, of course. They restrain him with leather straps around his wrists and ankles. By this time, hair previously styled to perfection for the sake of the interview has become disheveled and matted to his forehead with sweat. The only part of his interview outfit that has been removed is his jacket. Of course. They'll want clear access to his arm. A shiver runs down his spine. He pleads one more time for freedom before the door slides shut behind the Peacekeepers and he's alone.

There is a quiet commotion just beyond the door, a muffled chorus of several voices. They become more pronounced as the door opens and they usher in. Peeta's trying desperately to turn them out by rattling the chains attacked to the leather cuffs against the chair. It makes enough noise to be effective, and he keeps his eyes on the motion. He doesn't want to look them in the eye, doesn't want to see the frustration fueled anger that would lead only to his agony. He continues on like this for several moments, focusing only on the sound of the chains clanging until a strong voice cuts through the air. It's sharp, commanding, and it takes his breath away.

"Enough." It's President Snow, himself, and when Peeta looks up, he sees that they're alone.

The wound on his head begins to pulse painfully, a sharp throbbing to accentuate the slow steam of blood still sliding down his face. He's too tired to express surprise but he feels his heart seize before it falls into the pit of his stomach to be devoured by the acid and ill feeling. Snow doesn't seem outwardly angry, but Peeta's spoken with him enough to know that his emotions change like the tide. He tries to swallow but his throat is dry like sandpaper. He sets his arms down against the arms of the chair and the chains clatter one final time, and then there is silence. Unnerving, drawn out.

"Ah, Peeta." Snow starts, and his voice sounds tired. Less commanding, more weary. Peeta recognizes this immediately as a ploy, but he's so tired. So tired of fighting and pleading and telling them again and again that he has no information to give. He thinks that maybe they believe him, but they keep hurting him. They keep asking. Maybe they don't believe. His mind is so turned around it's hard to keep track of what thoughts are his own and what thoughts are theirs.

His inner turmoil is interrupted by the grate of the needle as it slides across the metal tray, the clang of the glass vial of venom against the counter. Peeta swallows thickly, Snow continues: "I'd really thought that I'd made myself clear."

Snow sets the tray on a wheeled stand and makes his way closer to where Peeta is restrained. There is a smell that follows Snow wherever he goes, sharp and overpowering. The President is lost to a fit of coughing as he walks and Peeta can feel the smell begin to claw at his skin, icing it over. The harsh metallic, rusty smell of blood mixed in with a genetically enhanced floral scent. Roses. There's nothing he can do, retrained like an animal. Starved to a point where fighting back is a near impossibility. He is so weak; _so, so tired_. He fights his eyes to keep them open, tries to focus on Katniss' braid again but the image is muddy now.

Is she safe? Had they heard his warning? Peeta's not sure that he'll live to find out.

Confusion settles again as Snow prepares the needle. Had they heard his warning? What does it matter? Why had he warned them in the first place? _They left you here to die. No, no. Wrong._ There must have been a misunderstanding. _She left you here to die._ Also wrong. She wouldn't. Katniss would never... or would she? _No, no, don't think about her. Not the eyes again, you'll be lost._ The angle of her jaw, the curve of her eyebrow. Anything but her eyes. Her face is nearly perfect in his memory but it changes in shades of red. Anger, hatred. It blazes and he tries to put it out, but he's always burned. Cold, hard. The ice is worse than the blaze. He squeezes his eyes shut, tries to picture anything but her face, but it's all he can see. _She left you here. She left you here. SHE LEFT YOU HERE._

Peeta just wants it all to end.

The needle enters his arm in his preoccupation and the sting of the venom's burn is a welcomed distraction; familiar. He's so lost within his own head it takes another barking command from Snow to raise his gaze, but even then it's haunted and hollow. Bloodshot and pained. Snow seems pleased. Peeta isn't surprised.

"I really had not wanted to show you this but, as it seems even the most advanced techniques cannot cure you of your ridiculous obsession with Katniss Everdeen..."

He trails off and Peeta can hear her voice, singing again. It's like an angel, and he thinks that maybe death could be that soft, that inviting. His vision starts to blur and shatter under the influence of the venom. It's almost as if he's acquired tunnel vision and everything outside of the tunnel begins to spin, shift and multiply. Even Snow, who had once seemed as if he were sitting right next to him, now seems a hundred miles away. Peeta squeezes his eyes shut, attempts to push away the nausea in his stomach. The pain spreads out slowly through his veins until his whole body begins to ache.

With the venom, everything is scary. He sorts through memories trying to find something to hold on to, but he finds only darkness splattered across the pages of his psyche. He tries to think of anything but Katniss Everdeen and comes up with a memory from when he was a boy, surely only seven at the time. Maybe eight. He's standing in the kitchen at the bakery. He'd attempted to pull a tray bread from the oven but one of his fingers had slipped from beneath the protective rag and touched the scalding hot metal. In an ephemeral moment of what, in his seven year old mind, was insurmountable pain, he'd dropped the tray onto the floor, spilling all of the contents. His mother hadn't hesitated to grab the first thing she could find -- thankfully it was just a rolling pin, not knife -- and swing it right against the side of his head. She'd started yelling then, she's always yelling in his memories, but he can't make out what she's saying. It's too muddled, but he remembers this altercation. She'd hit him too hard, and the resulting welt had kept him home from school for the rest of the week. Not that anyone had noticed. Not that anyone cared.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid creature._ A flash back to the present now and the same cloying thought. _She left you here. She left you here. **Maybe I deserved it.**_

Another needle, this time in the crook of this other arm, and he has to bite down on his blood caked lip to keep from crying out. The burn has turned to an inferno and even when he opens his eyes, he can't focus on anything. This will subside, he knows. It weakens him, weakens his defense. He's figured out the game they're playing but still hasn't quite deciphered what their desired result is. Do they want him dead? Does Katniss? He thinks about this a lot. If they wanted him dead, they could have easily killed him quicker than this. And Katniss... Well, Katniss isn't here. She hasn't been here. She isn't coming. Peeta wants to be dead, maybe she wants him dead, too.

"Focus, Peeta. It will all be over, soon." This captures his attention. Snow's words are laced with feigned kindness, but there is a sense of an imminent end. It will all be over soon. That's more than he could have hoped for hours ago when they had prepped him for his interview.

He tries to concentrate as he's told and he's able to bring most of the room back into focus. It still shifts with the airy, white trimmed shininess of unreality but he can see. There is a projector now and when he focuses on it, it comes to life. It takes him no time at all to realize he's watching Twelve. He's watching people running from their houses. They look scared, he can see that in their eyes, and it causes his stomach to sink.

He watches, still. More people, more frightened expressions. Another needle in his arm, and then the sting is back and the whole screen erupts into flames. There are hovercrafts, firebombs. Everything is exploding and the people are screaming. The venom distorts his vision and pulls the screen closer and it's as if he's there, can feel the heat on his own skin. Feel the clawing of smoke in the back of his throat. His eyes start to sting with the onset of tears.

Another needle, and then there are flashes of her. She's standing amongst the blazed wreckage and then she's gone. She's shooting an arrow at a hovercraft and he thinks she's trying to help, trying to save them, like she always does. His lips start to form her name but he stops short. The descent of the hovercraft brings about another wave of explosion, this time closer to home. Too close. His stomach sinks and he can hear the haunting sound of her voice again, singing, but he can no longer make out the words. He starts to focus on her eyes again and they're dancing in the flames. Alight, and smiling. Reveling. He shakes his head, wills her to leave. _No, no. No._ But the projection isn't finished.

It's traveling now, down the street where the bakery lies. It's all in rubble now and the walkways are fractured and littered with bodies. He knows where they're going and he wants it to stop but there's yet another needle in his arm and he sinks back into the chair. The bakery is in ruins but not so much that he cannot make out the sight of four bodies charring in the blaze, skin melted and surrounded by blood. What little food he'd had that day comes right back up at the sight of them. He looks back to the screen just in time to see his mother's apron go up in flames; to see his father's wedding ring slide from a thick, charred hand. And then it's over. It's all over. His life, his sanity, anything he'd had left. It's all over.

"She killed them." It's a voice soft in his ear. He's can't tell if it's Snow, or someone else, but it's chilling. Peeta hangs his head, squeezes his eyes shut, and pulls the leather cuffs until they're painfully tight around his wrists and twists until he feels a familiar burn. The pain doesn't help cement him this time. Another needle in his arm, and then: "She killed all of them. Everyone." Peeta nods. The image of her in his head now is darker. Her eyes are painted around the lid with charcoal and her face is unforgiving, unremorseful. Her skin dances in the vivid red and orange of the flames, and he can picture her clearly now. All the memories they've shown him, they all come flooding back now. The arena. The first arena. She dances in flames there, too. She's always surrounded by the blaze. _She is the blaze._

When he closes his eyes, she stands in front of him, bow aimed. And she smiles, a smile that is all at once so inviting and so sinister. Her lips curve perfectly and she beckons him forward in a voice that's smoother than velvet, sweeter than any song, and he's terrified of her. Terrified to the point of shaking, but he steps forward. He always steps toward her, and when he does, she shoots him square in the heart.

Flash back to reality, and he's screaming.

"Do you see her now, Peeta?" is what he hears at his hear. And he does. He does see her now. Worse than any nightmare, he sees her in reality for what she is. She doesn't dance in flames, she is the flames. Ignited, unforgiving and colder than any winter he's ever braved. The venom welcomes him into it's open arms and he finally sees. Katniss Everdeen doesn't love him. She's never loved him. He closes his eyes again and he sees her face, still shiny with unreality but he doesn't care. He doesn't care anymore because he can finally see her, can finally look into her eyes and see smoke and ash where he once saw a summer storm. He can see the blood that drips from her hands. _Dead, dead, dead. She wants me dead. That's why she left me here. She killed my family. She killed everyone._ He tries to fight it but he's too tired. Tired of being manipulated and lied to and played for a fool. _Dead, dead, dead._

He wants her dead, too.

Another memory surfaces, this one of a little girl on a stool. Two braids instead of one that flow down her back. She's singing and it's so sweet. So sweet and lacking the shiny nature of his other, more violent memories, but it's not enough. His brain erupts and this little girl goes up in flames just like his mother and his father and his brothers. She's gone, gone, gone, until all he's left is Katniss. Katniss in her military uniform aiming an arrow straight at his heart. "You should have known," she hums and her voice causes his stomach to turn. He wants to ask her why, but he's too scared. He's too angry. "You should have known all along." He opens his eyes just as second arrow pierces his heart and he twists the cuffs around his wrists again. The pain is grounding, but it doesn't stanch the rage.

He's tried so hard not to give in to this. So, so, hard, but he can't fight any longer. _Katniss Everdeen is a liar. Katniss Everdeen manipulated me. Katniss Everdeen wants me dead._ The thoughts ring and ring around his head until he feels as if it will split in two under the weight of all his accusations. The venom causes his head to swim.

_Katniss Everdeen saved my life._

It's not enough. It's never enough. He gives in to the venom, and when he closes his eyes again, he has his hands around her throat.

"Yes, I see her, now."


End file.
